Today's Fun California Prostitution Fact

“Prostitutes can look other men in the eye, but not a black male pimp.”

–An observation made by three California Court of Appeal judges this week before reversing a pandering conviction of Gerald Dennorest Mangham, a 27-year-old pimp who was trolling for workers outside the Santa Ana jail in May 2007. According to the court's opinion–which relied on an undercover cop's expertise, the price of a prostitute “eyeballing” a black male pimp is the loss of all of her money and “he can make her his.” Though–like a 2008 Orange County jury–they were convinced of Mangham's profession, the justices overturned the conviction (and the four-year prison sentence) on an unrelated jury instruction error. The district attorney's office will have to decide if it will retry the case. No word if white male pimps feel the eyeball rule is discriminatory.

After the jump: Mangham's mugshot.

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R. Scott Moxley

CNN-featured investigative reporter R. Scott Moxley has won Journalist of the Year honors at the Los Angeles Press Club; been named Distinguished Journalist of the Year by the LA Society of Professional Journalists; obtained one of the last exclusive prison interviews with Charles Manson disciple Susan Atkins; won inclusion in Jeffrey Toobin’s The Best American Crime Reporting for his coverage of a white supremacist’s senseless murder of a beloved Vietnamese refugee; launched multi-year probes that resulted in the FBI arrests and convictions of the top three ranking members of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department; and gained praise from New York Times Magazine writers for his “herculean job” exposing entrenched Southern California law enforcement corruption.

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